At long last, Sun Microsystems has concocted an x86 server line that all customers can take seriously. The company today rounded out its Opteron-based gear with three, new systems that stretch from "compact" blades to bulkier eight-socket boxes.

The 42 Cable & Wireless customers accused by the music industry of unauthorised file-sharing look likely to have their accounts withdrawn in line with a demand from industry body the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

Apple may be planning to ship its upcoming higher-capacity iPod Nanos in iPod Mini-like metal casings, it has been claimed. The move is said to be all about making the product less susceptible to scratching and to make the line-up more colourful.

Is this the face of Microsoft's alleged own-brand iPod clone? That's certainly what a number of gadget websites are claiming. It's said to be codenamed 'Argo' and to have the go-to-market name 'Zune', but there's little else that can said about it.

UK digital music device specialist Advanced MP3 Players has updated its tiny Pebble player, boosting the gadget's storage capacity to 2GB, adding support for DRM-protected WMA-encoded tracks and changing the name to Datasafe Oomi.

Sometimes it just pays to think bad thoughts. And, sometimes, it might even be a good idea to act on those bad thoughts. No, that doesn't mean you go out and shoot your boss. It does mean thinking bad thoughts about security. It means thinking like a hacker (no, not that sort of hacker, the sort that attacks your software/server/system).

The i-Steroid promises the warm sound quality you only get with old-style valve amplification, and there, clear for all to see, plugged in and powered up is the speaker set's single valve, glowing with sheer thermionic joy. The question is, does it make a difference to the sound, or is it simply there for show?

Datatec, the South African-owned networking dealer, is merging its home country operations with a black-owned business, African Legend Technologies (ALT). The enlarged group is to be called African Legend Indigo (ALI) and has pro forma annual revenues of R800m (c. £61m)- of which Datatec contributes 500m (£38m) and ALT the rest.

Last week, we ran a piece based on a chat we had with futurologist-in-chief at BT Group, Ian Pearson. It provoked quite a response - unsurprising, since Pearson was suggesting that men (specifically programmers) would be put out of work by the Rise of The Machines:

DCC, the Irish distie conglomerate, had its AGM yesterday. It says it's too soon since the last announcement in May to add much to market guidance, but it is "pleased with trading results in the first quarter and in particular the continuing pick up in the results of DCC SerCom", its IT wholesaling arm.

Worried about the way the internet is going? Frustrated at secret deals done behind closed doors? Well, worry no longer because The Reg's very own Kieren McCarthy has pledged to sort it out by standing for one of the three board positions that have opened up at internet overseeing organisation ICANN.

Seven thousand people sat in a Boston conference centre listening to a live band play soft rock while they waited for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to deliver his opening speech at the MS Worldwide Partner Conference this morning.

British traders have slammed an unexpected move by eBay to prune the range of payment methods it accepts. On Friday morning, Pacific Time - Friday evening in Europe - eBay declared that Nochex, a Leeds-based payment gateway, was no longer acceptable as a payment mechanism. Google's new Checkout service also found itself in the sin bin.

Almost half of the people who used mobile phone data for the first-time during the 2006 World Cup say they won't use mobile data again, a survey has found. Mobile operators certainly had some success in luring newcomers to try their data services, the numbers suggest. But converting them into regular data junkies is going to be much harder.

One of the few redeeming qualities Dell had left was its home base in Central Texas. The Lonestar State angle backed up Dell's hard-nosed, direct model approach to selling computers. The Texas toughness helped explain Dell's behavior over the years when the vendor ignored namby-pamby customer complaints in favor of always lowering prices.